# Crap Detection
## Sep 23rd Fri

### Google Search
One of the ways internet users can refine their search is by using Google's advance search tools. To answer the example questions:
- In order to see how many pages on the English Wikipedia site say Northeastern, you can navigate to the Google Advance Search webpage. From there, you fill in your phrase inside of quotation marks, select your domain, and narrow to the wikipedia website. I found that there were 6,190 results with this search criteria.
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- Another way to narrow one's Google search is to use advance shortcuts. For example, if one wanted to see webpages about skate fish but none about an ice rink, they could put "skate fish" in quotation marks but a "-" before "ice rink".
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- In order to query to see Web pages about the Northeastern Huskies from the first day of 2001 through the last day of 2002, one can plug in "Northeastern Huskies" into the traditional google search bar, and narrow the results to the specific date frame.
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### Web Credibility
Anyone who has encountered the internet knows that it comes with an insane abundance of information. A plethora of information can also come with a plethora of false information, which leaves it up to internet users to discern which is credible and which should be questioned. As Joyce Valenza puts it, "it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make reliability or credibility decisions. It is up to the reader or viewer to negotiate truth." Fortunately, there are steps readers can take, questions they can ask themselves, in order to discern credible sources from non-credible ones. The Berkeley Library suggests that internet users pay attention to authority, purpose, publication and format, relevance, date of publication, and documentation. Valenza also suggests evaluating news sites with certain credibility criteria, including echo chambers, content mills, and herding phenomenon. For university students, it is important to look for credibility in academic sources, but also watch out for fake news and virality that are widespread on social media.
One example of a fake news article, shown in the images below, is by the DC Gazette. Some red flags are that the author and date of publication are not stated, they use first person and a very personal, informal style of writing when it is not appropriate to do so, and they are delivering a personal attack on a celebrity and a group of people rather than actual news.

### Wikipedia Evaluation
This page of Professor Joseph Reagle contains fraudulent information and cannot be trusted by readers. Wikipedia's verifability policy states that all information must be availiable so that readers can trace it back to an academic source. There are only three sources listed for Reagle's page. The third source does not lead anywhere, and the second source does not verify that Reagle worked at the World Wide Web consortium. Additionally, Joseph Michael Reagle Jr's page has not been edited sine 2014, so it is not up to date and therefore not reliable. I would suggest revamping this page so that the information is up to date, and also verifying the correct information with reliable, updated sources. This page was first created on August 1, 2011.